Falah Mustafa Bakir (left), September 16 in Washington, along with Ed Royce, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives.
The decision to send 150 Peshmerga fighters in Iraqi Kurdistan with heavy weaponry Kobané, Syria, is it a turning point for the Kurds and for the region?
Falah Mustafa: This is a historic decision. Kurdistan shows that it is at the forefront of the international coalition against the Islamic state (EI). We must overcome the AR. We're on the side of peace, democracy, tolerance. And our international responsibility, morality, and to our Kurdish brothers in Syria is to intervene and defeat the Islamic state.
This is the first time that the peshmerga will fight outside the borders of Iraqi Kurdistan. This is not fun for everyone ...
First, the operation is an operation Kobané against the jihadists of the Islamic state. However, we must fight them wherever they are. Then the Kurdistan must support its Kurdish brothers, including outside Iraq. And finally, Kurdistan is a model for the free world. We do what is right. The main obstacle of this operation was geographical. We had to negotiate with Turkey. Otherwise, we would have intervened to Kobané earlier and with more fighters.
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The support received from the international community since the offensive against the Kurdistan EI in August is it enough, from a military point of view, to both defend the region and intervene in Syria?
We appreciate this support, but we need more. We are at the front on behalf of the civilized world, and for freedom.
The first challenge is safe. We need heavy weapons to conduct offensive to destroy the Islamic State: drones, tanks, heavy artillery, anti-tank weapons ... The foreign air raids are effective but not enough. And we need to better share military intelligence.
The second challenge is humanitarian. There are more than 1.5 million Iraqi refugees in Syria and Kurdistan. Additional approximately 10,000 refugees have arrived from Kobané by Turkey. And this happens in a year when we have not received anything from a budgetary point of view, Baghdad. Our peshmerga are not paid for three months. We need humanitarian and financial support.
